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Monday, August 07, 2017

We must defend Maduro and his Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela

By SJ
Otto

There
is so much hypocrisy on the US stand against Venezuelan
President Nicolas Maduro and his Constituent Assembly vote that it is hard to
decide where to start. Supposedly Maduro is voting on a system that will grant
him more power and damage the so called "democracy" that Venezuela has
had for many decades.

President
Trump has slapped sanctions on Maduro and his
country. US and Western politicians, along with almost every mainstream Western
journalist, have run a steady stream of anti-Maduro propaganda, as if Maduro
was another Hitler.

And
yet we see how phony this campaign is when we look at recent events in Turkey, where
President Recep Erdoğan has just held an election to give him all the powers a
leader needs to be an actual dictator. According to The New Yorker:

"On Sunday, Erdoğan declared himself the winner of a
nationwide referendum that all but brings Turkish democracy to an end. The vast
new powers granted to Erdoğan—wide control over the judiciary, broad powers to
make law by decree, the abolition of the office of the Prime Minister and of
Turkey’s parliamentary system—effectively make him a dictator. Under the new
rules, Erdoğan will be able to run for two more five-year terms, giving him
potentially another decade in power, at least. With a vote by the now truncated
parliament, he would be able to run for yet another term, one that would end in
2034. By then, he’ll be an old man."

So
where are all the sanctions? Where are all the condemnations? Where are the
endless tirades demanding Erdoğan step down? The difference is that Turkey is a close US ally and a supporter
of both US capitalism
and imperialism. No matter how much of a dictator he becomes, both US politicians
and the mainstream press are keeping their hands off of Erdoğan.

This
anti-Maduro campaign is not restricted to the US. British politicians and their
news media have also jumped into campaign. Conservative news outlets have
trashed Jeremy Corbyn, the democratic
socialist Labour Party leader. For example, the
tabloid newspaper The Sun ran an article claiming:

"JEREMY
Corbyn hailed Venezuela as a model of socialism — until it brought carnage,
ruin and squalor to a once wealthy country.

Comrade Corbyn has also long championed the
despots who plunged this supposed Marxist paradise into bloody chaos."

Not
surprising, many conservative Latin American countries have joined in with
the US condemning
Maduro and his election. Argentina,
Brazil, Colombia, Costa
Rica, Guatemala,
Honduras, Mexico and Paraguay
- have joined in the chorus of their imperialist master—the US. Many have
had their own problems with either left-wing political movements or actual
insurgents.
At least four brave national Latin American leaders have come out in favor of
Maduro and that is Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador
and Nicaragua.
Russia and China have also come out to support Venezuela. According to Telesur TVBolivian President Evo Morales congratulated Venezuela for
its successful National Constituent Assembly:

“I would recommend Mexico and Colombia make
their own Constituent Assembly ... to change their capitalist system, their
imperialist system,"

And
the reality of this support is that it is not strong enough to counter what the
US and its allies are trying to do to that nation, both in their propaganda
drive and actual destructive campaigns that include sanctions, CIA support to the opposition, including
encouraging the demonstrations that have gained Venezuela so much negative
attention.

Telesur TValso posted an article exposing US cables
published by WikiLeaks:

"WikiLeaks has published a declassified
1978 U.S. diplomatic
cable revealing U.S. interest
in Venezuelan oil.

WikiLeaks has published an
excerpt of a 1988 declassified cable between the U.S. State Department and the
U.S. Embassy in Caracas highlighting
the United States'
longstanding interests in Venezuela...

The cable, titled "U.S.
Goals, Objectives and Resource Management for Venezuela,"
outlines that the main goal of U.S.-Venezuela relations is to ensure that
"Venezuela continues to supply a significant portion of our petroleum
imports and continue to follow a moderate and responsible oil price position inOPEC."

The release
of the declassified document comes a day after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
warned of "regime change"
in Venezuela.

“We are
evaluating all of our policy options as to what can we do to create a change of
conditions where either Maduro decides he doesn’t have a future and wants to
leave of his own accord or we can return the government processes back to their
constitution,” Tillerson told a press conference.

Tillerson
is the former CEO of oil giant ExxonMobile, raising suspicion his position
onVenezuela has been influenced by oil interests.

President Maduro has
attacked the recent sanctions are an "imperialist attack"
against Venezuela.

Cuba likewise
described U.S. actions
as "an international plot to
suppress the will of the Venezuelan people."

As this article shows, Rex Tillerson, US Secretary
of State, is also a former oil executive. There is a close relationship between
the US government
and its corporate interests. As with Tillerson these relationships, corporate
and political, overlap. And corporate interests are largely what drives US
interests in the "Venezuelan democracy." Beyond human rights and fair
elections there is always the interest of the free market and capitalism. Every US foreign
policy decision is driven by corporate interests—that is our access to
resources and markets. Those interests come first. That explains why human
rights and democracy are important to the US for Maduro but of almost
no importance toErdoğan's regime.

Maduro is part of the Bolivarian Revolution, a movement of
democratic socialist parties that are trying to provide empowerment to their
poorest citizens and control over their natural resources from corporations
that are part of US and Western Imperialism. According to members of the
Friends of Venezuela Solidarity Committee (Barbados)
and the Caribbean Movement for Peace and
Integration:

“We recognized and support the
election of the Venezuela’s National Constituent Assembly(ANC). We also
support this Assembly that embraces a wide cross section of Venezuelan People,”
activists said in a joint statement.

They also denounced Venezuela’s right-wing opposition, which is calling for
the removal of democratically-elected President Nicolas Maduro, and called on Barbados and other Caribbean countries
to support the ANC.

“The peace loving people of Barbados and the Caribbean will protect the
Bolivarian Revolution that defends the poor and powerless people of the Americas,” the
statement said.

“This Revolution has created
the condition for many Caribbean Countries to deal with our problems of energy,
health, education, housing and many other social problems that have affected the poor
and powerless in our region.”

If there is one thing the US has no
interest in, it is the rights of the poor and powerless. The US and its
Western partners are government of the rich, for the rich, by the rich and
financed by the lower classes. There is no empathy for any "poor people's
government."

So
that brings us to the conclusion of this story—where do we go from here? Our
news media is saturated with advice on what to do about Venezuela.[1] With
the exception of a few alternative, liberal, Marxist and democratic socialist web
sites, such as this one,[2] all the talking heads are looking at
ways to either convince Maduro he must step down or just simply get rid of
him—by whatever means that seems to work. In the case of the US, one of
their favorite methods of regime change is the military coup. That may be hard
for this country as Maduro and former Venezuela President Hugo
Chávez have strong ties to the military. But it
can't be ruled out. The US has
a long history of taking out left-leaning leaders, such as Salvador
Allende, of Chile, with military coups. These coups are often violent
and can lead to undemocratic, anti-human rights military dictators such as that
of General Augusto Pinochet, of Chile. The US government has never had a problem with
killing democracy to save the free market, US capitalism and imperialism.

So
what do we do? Some of that is obvious. We print articles in any publication we
can, which should include writing letters to our local newspapers.[3] Many
of us write for blogs, with small audiences, and we need to provide honest
information for those honest and thoughtful people who will take the time to
look for another opinion when they realize they are being robbed of such information.
We can take advantages of public forums, election campaigns and other events
where there are a lot of people present and our voices can be heard.

—Demonstrations- campaigns- all need to
be utilized! —

Although
DSA is different from the Bolivarian Revolutions of Latin America, we need to
support those countries that try to move their country from the capitalist
right to some form of democratic socialism. There are some problems with the
socialist movement in Venezuela
respecting human rights and democracy, but the leaders, such as Maduro, need
space to work out their differences. The opposition right-wing, that is staging
the demonstrations, is also not respecting human rights. We need to point that
out and not allow them to run the kind of demonstrations this country would
never tolerate. We need to remember how intolerant this country was of the
Occupy Movement. If this country can shut down demonstrations here at home, why
should we push the government of Maduro to tolerate the same kind of dissent
the US
did not tolerate?

The
Bolivarian revolutions may not be our ideal socialist system, but if we can't
defend Maduro—how can we defend our own efforts to create socialism here in the
US.
It is possible that the same system that destroys a socialist movement in Venezuela may not tolerate peaceful efforts to
bring leftist change to the US.

This
is the perfect time to start practicing with campaigns to stop US imperialism.
If the Bolivarians can't survive, how can our own socialist party survive here
in the US?
We must support the rights of smaller nations to determine their own destiny
without the meddling of US Imperialism.

Occupy Oakland:
Police Standoff & Brutal Assault, Tear Gas

[1]See for example: José Miguel Vivanco and Tamara Taraciuk Broner,
"What the world needs to do about Venezuela," CNN, http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/23/opinions/twitter-venezuelan-protest-vivanco-broner/index.html

[2]This is an example of such a web site, a liberal/democratic
socialist blog.

[3]Don't laugh. Many local newspapers will print our letters and we
get a least a quick sound bite to counter all the propaganda that the main
stream press is flooding the news with. See as an example: "Killing from
afar- Letter to the Wichita Eagle Editor,"Artsy Fartsy, http://artsyfartsy45.blogspot.com/2017/02/killing-from-afar-letter-to-wichita.html

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SJ Otto

Works at Otto's Book Store, Attended Wichita State University, Lives in Maize, KS. "I’m an author, blog writer and blog editor." This is now a part of a blog collective. We appeal to several different interests, cultural, political and personal.

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